Five important questions about the analogy of being

1. First of all, what is it? It is not so much a thing as it is a statement about everything creaturely. It is Erich Przywara’s shorthand for his quite complex understanding of the formal structure of created existence. As it tends to be used, it can refer not only to Przywara’s understanding of this structure but also to the structure itself. Thus it is a name both for a theory and for that to which the theory refers.

It has what one might call a horizontal and a vertical aspect. In itself, creaturely existence is analogical. That is to say, it is never identical with itself but is nevertheless not merely nothing. Such is its incompleteness, its temporality, its provisionality. Some of what it is definitively is always already present in it, and yet to a perhaps much greater extent what it is definitively still eludes or transcends it. Przywara expresses this idea in the formula: Sosein in-und-ueber Dasein, essence in-and-beyond existence. This is the horizontal aspect of the analogy of being. Or, as Przywara says, it is the inner-creaturely analogy.

The vertical aspect concerns the creature’s relation with God. In this case, the transcendence is much more pronounced. The being of God is infinitely above and yet nevertheless present within creation. In the final analysis, to say that the creature is not merely nothing is to say that there is some likeness of God that is disclosed in the creature, however limited it may because of our finitude and however effaced it may be because of sin. However, as soon as one posits such a likeness, Przywara believes it is necessary to remember the dictum of the Fourth Lateran Council, which is in continuity with the ancient Christian tradition of apophasis: namely, that every creaturely similarity with God is surpassed by a still greater–and, indeed, never bridgeable–dissimilarity.

2. What is the warrant for this theory? Przywara grounds it both in his engagement with the philosophy of Greek antiquity (especially Plato and Aristotle) and also in his interpretation of creaturely existence as it is presented in Christian scripture and tradition (particularly in Augustine and Aquinas). Thus he finds warrants for it in what have come to be called reason and revelation. Suppose one rejects the former warrant, with the conviction that it illegitimately imports foreign elements into Christian theology, one must nevertheless contend with the second, which has a certain degree of independence. One cannot dismiss the analogy of being by denouncing its philosophical foundation, for it is doubly founded, and also demands to be understood as an interpretation of that which God has revealed concerning creation.

3. What is the scope of this theory? This is in some ways the trickiest question to answer. For, on the one hand, the theory purports to apply to everything creaturely. And yet, on the other hand, it says strikingly little. What it says is precisely this: almost nothing. To be a creature–in comparison with the fullness of being for which one strives, and especially in comparison with the God who is infinitely above and beyond all things–is to be almost nothing. But it is necessary to take seriously both parts of this saying. As radically distant, not only from that which is essential to our own being, but also from the hyperessential reality of God, it is as though–and this is barely an exaggeration–we are nothing at all, mere dust in the wind of the universe. And yet, creation is precisely such that one can only almost negate it totally, for something remains present within it, even if one manages only to speak of it through a double negation: we are not not.

So the analogy of being implicates everything but determines very little about it. It is, therefore, far from sufficient as an account of what it means to be human, to be Christian, or–for that matter–to be Catholic. Much more extensive use needs to be made of both reason and revelation to fill out a more adequate picture of things as a whole. The analogy of being cannot claim any clear sense of priority over other kinds of questions, concerning, for instance, the Trinity, or Christology, the destructive effects of sin, or the life of the church. It is a principle but not necessarily the first principle.

4. Is the analogy of being toxic for ecumenical dialogue? It could be. To the extent that it tends to polarize groups of Christian thinkers who, otherwise, would have much about which they could agree, it is a dangerous bit of theorizing. However, remembering its limited scope, its double foundation in reason and revelation, and its insistence on the radical alterity of God may help keep the conversation from veering off track.

5. Is it possible to hold onto what is central to the analogy of being without recourse to the problematic discourse of being, which has become greatly destabilized in our postmodern age? In a sense, this may be one of Jean-Luc Marion’s most stunning achievements, but I will have to say more on that later!

I think this post is very well done and very clear (and anything very well done and very clear about Przywara is nothing less than a small miracle).

As for #2, my reading of Przywara sees the philosophical ‘foundation’ for the analogy of being as primarily indirect and negative, meaning that for Przywara it is the failures and antinomies of antique or modern philosophy that are most revealing and helpful for theology. One can see this polemical aspect of Przywara in the deconstructive first-halves of the 1932 “Analogia Entis,” as well as the earlier “Gott” and “Religionsphilosophie katholischer Theologie” (both from around 1925-26, I think).

I also like #3, as it catches well the strange functions of the AE (which really is a variety of things, the first of which, however, is an affirmation of the Creator-creature distinction) within doctrine. On the one hand, the AE is supposed to be expressive of Catholic doctrine as whole, or its ‘Struktur,’ and on the other hand it can also use a regulative principle for casting every likeness within an ever greater unlikeness (unlikenesses that remain derived from Scripture or warranted by it).

Andrew, this is really helpful – particularly for someone who knows almost nothing about Przywara other than brief secondary accounts. My knowledge of the analogia entis is almost entirely filtered through Balthasar. The dual foundation in philosophy and revelation is clear in Balthasar as well, although the emphasis (maybe due to his engagement with Barth) is on the latter.

You really play down the notion that the analogia entis gives us much by way of content. Part of this I think is the apophatic that follows the cataphatic when we are dealing with God (semper maior). But does Przywara see it saying anything more than the idea of mere existence? Goodness? Freedom? Love? How much do these come into play within the analogy? Would they be included as one is grounded more on revelation than philosophy?

Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about the polemical side of Przywara’s engagement with philosophy. That is an important qualification of my point about a double foundation. The polemic seems in some ways less pronounced in his discussions of Plato and Aristotle. From what I recall, he presents them as imperfectly analogical thinkers, but analogical nonetheless. Whereas regarding modern philosophy, especially in the tradition of German idealism, he sees almost only devastating problems.

You have also reminded me that Przywara finds a home for the analogy of being in basically all of the major doctrinal contexts and not only in the doctrine of creation. So even if, in a sense, it begins there, it is taken up elsewhere.

That’s a really good question. In my reading of Przywara, the analogy tends to get “filled in” by the kinds of things you mentioned, but they are not deducible from it. So the structure of analogy can be discerned in our discussions of goodness, freedom, etc., but the latter are not simply derived from, or overdetermined by, the former. So the analogia entis can say these things only because they can say it.

To answer your question from before, I’d love to meet up in person and discuss this stuff (you are the only person I know of who has actually read Przywara). There is indeed a DR going down with Betz and I think we’d benefit from you stopping by.

So far, it seems to me that the analogia entis is indeed almost exclusively formal. I think you’re right that it’s not at all sufficient and fills in almost nothing in terms of content. It’s paradoxical this way: getting it wrong in one sense seems so trivial, and yet in another sense can negatively affect everything.

I’d love to talk about #5 too. I found Marion’s early, more explicitly theological work (Idol and Distance) to be very analogical. Unsurprising, I suppose, since he was so influenced by Balthasar. And then of course you have his explicit pardoning of analogy in the Thomas essay and his rejection of univocity in the various studies of Cartesian metaphysics. But it is clear he thinks this analogy can and indeed must be thought outside the strictures of a discourse on being.